Good Evans

Lee Evans is a man of many contradictions. He’s a musician who went into comedy by accident. He’s a boxing champion who got called “a poof” when he became the first member of his family to attend university. He’s also the guy who changed his name by deed poll to SLO 500K in order that he could boast of having a personalised car numberplate. Perhaps the biggest contradiction about Lee Evans is that his awkward, childlike slapstick and small-boy-lost-on-the-High-Street demeanor was the antithesis of the smart-ass, sardonic comic routines that prevailed in 1988, the year he took the Edinburgh festival by storm. Since then he’s gone on to TV and sit-com stardom, enjoys sell-out live tours whenever he goes on the road and has starred in a number of Hollywood blockbusters, playing alongside such luminaries as Oliver Reed, Jerry Lewis and Bruce Willis.

“Do you know,” muses Evans in his faintly bewildered voice, “when you put it like that it does sound sort of impressive. I don’t really think about it like that though. It’s just stuff I do. To be honest I still half expect people to rumble me every time I go on-stage or act on a set. ‘Wait a minute, Evans…You’re shit!’ They haven’t yet though…”

For many acts with his track record, such modesty might seem a tad forced. But Evans seems genuinely surprised by his own talents. Born in Avonmouth, a working class housing estate just outside Bristol, he is the issue of a father who was a Welsh, teetotal, travelling musician and an Irish mother who was fond of a social drink.

“On Good Friday and at Christmas all the neighbours and relatives would come to our house,” he remembers. “It was great. But it was unconventional, I suppose. We travelled around a lot ‘cos of my dad’s job. He plays about 20 instruments, a bit of a genius, actually. But me and my brother would hang around backstage and talk to strange performers. And we’d change schools a lot and have to make new friends. But my brother was older and he kept an eye on me. I was an idiot to be honest and I was picked on a lot. I was the kid in the corner painting and writing notes.”

It sounds like a classic comedy upbringing, in that performing must have given the shy Evans an opportunity to finally express himself creatively.

“Uh, no actually it wasn’t like I rebelled and decided ‘Sod you bullies, I’m going to be a famous comic’, I initially wanted to go to Art College.” He pauses. “In my family though that was probably quite a rebellious decision. My dad had been a miner for a while and his dad was a miner and they were rock hard blokes. When I said I wanted to study art I might just as well have walked in wearing make-up and a dress. Even my brother didn’t understand. ‘You’re gay!’ It’s like that old Pete ‘n Dud sketch, ‘The sewers are too good for you, you ungrateful bastard’. But it must have been hard for them. Me comin’ home in my punk band gear.”

Lee Evans was a punk rocker?

“Yeah, I was a drummer in a shit punk band. That’s how I got into comedy ‘cos the audiences would just laugh. I’d call people sir and miss, ‘Excuse me sir can you move your cider bottles out of my bass drum?’ I was a pretty pathetic punk, but the thing is I couldn’t help it, it was how I was brought up. Middle-class mates would shout at old ladies on the bus and I’d be giving up my seat: ‘Here you go Missus’. And that’s how the comedy gradually evolved, ‘cos it was funny to me too even though it was real. See, I knew I was an idiot, but I couldn’t do anything about it. And in fairness, I was a nice idiot. A sort of mild-mannered monkey-boy.”

If he was old fashioned in his manners, his comedic influences also came from a quieter time.

“It was my dad,” he explains, “he had this huge, powerful laugh, like you couldn’t go to the pictures with him ‘cos you’d be too embarrassed. He loved the Goons, Tony Hancock, ‘Round the Horne and the Python team… And funnily enough, since people have always talked about how visual my comedy is, my earliest influences came from the radio. It was later when I started to discover Chaplin and Keaton and also Rowan Atkinson, who I really admire. Again it’s just that I am a very physical bloke, I act out conversations in real life. It comes from spending a lot of time alone as a kid I reckon.”

His first film role in Funny Bones led to his meeting one of his heroes, Jerry Lewis.

“I was so scared when I met him that I didn’t talk to him for three weeks,” he recalls. “And he finally came bangin’ on my trailer door asking if I wanted Harry Ramsden’s fish and chips. And I was delighted ‘cos I’d heard he could be difficult. The snag was that after I said, ‘Yes please’ he came by with ‘em every day. And I met Oliver Reed on that film as well. A really, really nice man.”

So can he tell us which Hollywood stars he’s worked with are real gits?

“I’ve been lucky!” He insists. “I hate that star trip thing. But I’ll tell ya, on Mousehunt I had an assistant called Todd who was supposed to drive me to the set, and the first day I said, ‘You’re okay, mate, I’ll drive’. And do you know, by the end of the shoot the bugger wouldn’t even get me a cup of coffee! He was like, ‘Fuck you, man’. Serves me bloody right. But I’ve gone for drinks with Cameron Diaz and Matt Dillon when I was on Something About Mary, I think Bruce Willis liked me when I done The Fifth Element ‘cos I made him laugh, and recently I fulfilled an ambition and worked with Kathy Burke in The Martins. And it’s great that I get offered real parts as well as just fill-in comedy bits. I loved The Martins, it was not a million miles away from Avonmouth, that film.”

Is he awkward in real life?

“I really am!” He laughs. “I can’t even make a cup of tea. And I hate being like that! I want to be sauve and chic, which is hard to do when you’re trying to wipe PG Tips out of your crotch with the corner of a tablecloth… And another thing I can’t do is home repairs. But I always think I should do it because my dad could. Just recently I wanted to fix a spotlight on our roof and I reached for my tools and slid off the roof. Luckily I grabbed the guttering which slowed my fall as it came away from the roof. And I’m hanging there praying to god and my wife’s down below in the front garden screaming ‘You should’ve got someone in!’ It’s fuckin’ chaos sometimes to be honest. But at least I get to talk about it. And it seems to amuse you lot.”